Mrs. Bush's Remarks in a Roundtable Discussion at Howard University's Center for Infectious Disease Management and Research
Howard University Hospital
Washington, D.C.

9:20 A.M. EDT

MRS. BUSH: Well, I got to meet Dr. Maxwell when she was at the White House
on World AIDS Day, where we talked about different programs that were going
on in the United States and programs that were going on globally that
address AIDS, programs that are funded in large part -- the Global Fund --
part by the American taxpayer.

But I was so fascinated to hear what Dr. Maxwell had to say about this
hospital, Howard University Hospital, being really the first site to do
what the CDC is proposing, and that is to offer testing for AIDS to every
single person that comes in, for whatever reason they're here, whether
they're coming in for cosmetic surgery or they're coming to the emergency
room with some sort of emergency accident or wound.

And the whole point of it, and the point that I hope I'll be able to draw
attention to is how important it is for everyone to have an AIDS test be
just part of their regular medical tests. If you know that you're HIV
positive, you can change your behavior so you don't infect your loved ones.
If you know you're HIV positive, you can seek treatment. We know now, we
see it -- I see it around the world, actually, as I travel, that people can
live positively with AIDS for a long time, live a healthy life, that AIDS
is not the death sentence that we once thought it was. And so to avoid
testing is really making a big mistake for people.

So I want to thank you very much, Dr. Maxwell, for all the things that
you've started here that are so great and that are a really wonderful model
for the rest of the country. And I hope this is something, with the
reauthorization of Ryan White, that will start in many other hospitals
nationwide, because it's just very, very important for us to know in the
United States, for each of us as individuals, to know our HIV status.